A little piece of me…

Technology

You might not believe this, but the first iPod was only released in 2001. It seems like they have been around forever, and certainly 14 years seems like a long time, especially for a tech product. I mean, how is it that we don’t have chips inserted into our brains yet so that we can access music and the internet just by thinking about it? I’m sure that I read a book about that once, and I’m sure that’s being worked on my someone already!

Anyway, for this week’s Throwback Thursday I thought I’d take a look at the first iPod, the latest iPod and when the different versions came out.

So the first iPod was the iPod Classic and it was released on 23rd October 2001. Oh yeah, I remember these bad boys. And the design of the Classic really doesn’t look all that different even now.

But compare this to the latest iPod to be released which was the 6th generation iPod Touch on 15th July 2015.

Think about this, 14 years ago, the Classic was released with 5GB of storage (later came with 10GB), and had a life of about 10 hours when listening to music. The latest Touch comes with anywhere between 16-128GB of storage and can last up to 40 hours listening to music or 8 hours watching video. Huge difference, but what do you think, in 14 years have they come quite far enough or would you have expected more for the iPod by now?

For interests sake, let’s have a look at when the models for the iPod range were released, the first and last model for each category:

iPod Classic: 23rd October 2001 – 5th September 2007

iPod Mini: 6th January 2004 – 22nd February 2005

iPod Nano: 7th September 2005 – 12th September 2012

iPod Shuffle: 11th January 2005 – 1st September 2010

iPod Touch: 5th September 2007 – 15th July 2015

Interesting development over time huh, moved quite quickly from the scroll pad to being a complete touch screen with the Nano as of the 6th generation, to having the Touch which is well, a bigger version of the touch screen Nano! But then I guess, the Nano screen is a bit too small to see videos on clearly really.

So where do you see this technology going in the future? Maybe we’ll have a Virtual Reality iPod next where you can download songs with official music videos or concerts or intimate shows maybe so you can feel like you’re really getting that immersive experience with music. Or maybe it’ll be holographic, so the iPod projects a little image of the singer or band playing the songs. What do you think?

In last week’s post I looked at the evolution of the phone, or more specifically the ones we used around the home. Then I hit about the time when the mobile phone was invented and wow didn’t phone technology explode then!

So we ended last week with this picture of the first mobile phone which was released in 1984. Can’t see this baby fitting in anyone’s back pocket, can you?!

As I was perusing the internet looking for appropriate mobile phone pictures I found one that sums everything up really neatly, and I thought rather than reinvent the wheel, I would include their infographic on this post instead.

See…I told you there was a buttload going on with the evolution of phones over the last 30 years!! I see quite a few models of phones on there that I’ve had over the years, how about you? Any stand out phones on there that you loved or hated?

Surely everyone knows this quote from Star Wars right? You have a hologram of Princess Leia asking Obi Wan Kenobi for help. Back then, the idea of a holographic projection was total science fiction. Now though, it’s reality.

I bring this up for a couple of reasons. I work with educational technologies so I’m really interested in how we can improve the learning experience, and man I reckon holographic projections could be huge! Imagine if you did most of your studies externally but needed some way of seeing a demo right in front of you, as if you were actually standing there? Sure maybe you could use 3D glasses and sorta kinda get the idea, or even Google Cardboard may help too though I don’t know about you it makes me awfully dizzy. Why not do it without the headgear and just have it pop up right on your table top? Walk all the way around it, see it from any angle you want to. I think this has real potential in the education sector, and I am dying to find a project at work where I can suggest this as an idea.

The second reason I bring this up is because one of the guys who came up with this idea, Will Tamblyn, I used to work with him. Lovely guy, absolutely brilliant. I remember talking to him a few years ago when he and his buddy Gavin were just throwing around the idea. It seemed totally out of this world even then, that a couple of guys could come up with something like this just over beers, or coffee or even the household tea kettle! To see an thought like this actually become like a real thing called Voxiebox is pretty darn cool and I’m really happy that Will and Gavin have been able to actually do it but also take it to companies like NASA, that’s a pretty huge achievement!

Will and Gavin did a TEDx Talk in Adelaide a while back and I’d recommend watching the video and hearing the story of how the Voxiebox came to be. It’s a pretty funny story. The audio in the video isn’t too great, but it’s worth the watch.